A brief history

Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

Around 1930: Clint Benedict of the Montreal Maroons becomes the first goalie to wear a mask, a crude leather contraption he devised after his nose and cheekbone were injured when he was hit by a puck. Benedict wore it for only two games because it impaired his vision.

Around 1934: Roy Mosgrove, first in Winnipeg and later in the British Ice Hockey League, experiments with a wire-cage mask (like a catcher's mask) designed to protect his eyeglasses, which he wore while playing hockey.

1950s: Other goaltenders try wire-cage masks or clear shields, but only during practice because of complaints about glare or fogging during games - not to mention their tough-guy image with fans and opposing players.

1959: Jacques Plante of the Montreal Canadiens dons a flesh-tone mask made of fiberglass with cutouts for the eyes. Plante is ridiculed by other players, but he responds: "If you jump from an airplane without a parachute, is that considered an act of bravery?"

1960: Bill Burchmore, a promotional manager for Fiberglas Canada who helped develop Plante's original mask, fine-tunes it with fiberglass cloth and bars contoured to the goalie's face. The new version is called the "pretzel" design. This inspires the mask Ken Dryden would wear at Cornell and with the Canadiens in the early 1970s.

1962: Terry Sawchuk of the Detroit Red Wings becomes one of the first prominent goalies after Plante to wear a mask regularly.

1970: Plante's mask is expanded to include hard ridges on the forehead and to protrude over the ears. It withstands tests in which pucks were fired out of an air cannon at 120 mph.

Early 1970s: In a departure from the plain goalie mask, Doug Favell of the Philadelphia Flyers wears an orange mask in a game after his teammates spray-paint it as a Halloween prank.

1974: The last year that an NHL goaltender played without a mask (Andy Brown, Pittsburgh Penguins.)

1974-75: Tony Esposito of the Chicago Blackhawks designs a cage that fits over his mask to protect his eyes. This is considered the prototype for the modern-day goalie mask.

1976: Glenn "Chico" Resch of the New York Islanders sports an elaborately painted mask, paving the way for masks featuring ornate or flamboyant artwork that would become popular in the years to come.

1979: Flyers goalie Bernie Parent sustains a serious eye injury when he's struck with a stick through the eye slit of his mask. This accelerates a shift away from "molded" masks to helmet/cage or hybrid face mask/cage designs, which are deemed safer.

Present day: High-tech materials such as carbon fiber, which is also used in snowboards and mountain bikes; and Kevlar, which is also used in body armor, are common in goalie masks.

Sources: "A Breed Apart: An Illustrated History of Goaltending," by Douglas Hunter; nhl.com; Center Ice magazine; answers.com.